A year of travel and a world's worth of food.

Main menu

Category Archives: Amsterdam

Again relying on Cushla’s ace recommendations, I sampled a couple more local specialties on my second and final day in Amsterdam. For lunch, I had a goat cheese (Dutch goat cheese is very good), honey, thyme, and pine nut sandwich on brown bread at one of Amsterdam’s best broodje (sandwich) shops — Singel 404. I highly recommend this if you visit.

Later, I met Cushla for an afternoon snack at Winkel (at the Noordermarkt), home of the most famous apple pie in Amsterdam. Not to be missed.

I knew I had finally reached the Continent when I started my day with this breakfast:

Amsterdam is a beautiful city and this is my first visit, but surprisingly, I hadn’t really thought about the cuisine in advance of my arrival, nor did I have much knowledge of the local delicacies. Fortunately, I have a friend who lives here (a certified Melbourne foodie and coffee expert to boot) who gave me a solid list of things to do, that certainly does not neglect food or coffee. As of now, these are a few Dutch specialties I have discovered and may or may not yet have tried (I have only been here for 24 hours): pancakes, apple pie, pancakes, brown bread, herring, oude kaas (a type of cheese).

Although I was still a bit full from breakfast, I wanted to try a Dutch pancake. To do this, I visited Pancakes! in the 9 Streets neighborhood. I ordered a pancake with speck (ham) and kaas (cheese) and then topped it off with some stroop (syrup) — a combo that had been recommended by my friend. This was one seriously heavy pancake. Even I couldn’t finish it all. It was good, but a little on the salty side.

I was also still full from lunch when I ventured out for dinner (this has become somewhat of a theme). A mini herring burger did the trick anyhow.